Notes

Another [song] is based on replies to a national survey introduced by David Cameron to find out what makes Britain unhappy. “There were people in Bradford going, ‘You can’t get mushy peas any more.’ ” He hoots with laughter. “Another answer was, ‘Snow Patrol being played on the radio.’ That would annoy me.” He hits the table, delighted by the banality of the responses. He leans forward, suddenly conspiratorial. “My intelligence is vast. You wouldn’t believe what people tell me.”

4. Esso is one of the brand names of ExxonMobile; in the US the "Esso" brand has been mostly supplanted by "Exxon"; according to Wikipedia, this happened in 1973, but I was only five then and I clearly remember Esso stations when I was a child, so the brand may have persisted a bit longer than that. "Esso" is a phonetic rendering of "SO," for Standard Oil."

Comments (7)

While it seems the purpose of The Annotated Fall is to discuss lyrics, I can't help but take note of the mixing of this track.

There is no shortage of Fall songs that are produced or mixed in ways that violate the unspoken, or even spoken, rules of music studio recording. Here, the music faded down slightly when the vocals enter. This is a technique which is anathema to "good mixing technique": you want to make the vocals "pop out" of the mix without needing to reduce volume, or have the band re-arrange the song.

Dipping vocal volume was more accepted in the 1950s, before multi-track mixing became the norm. It could be MES is purposefully referencing earlier eras of music recording, which would rhyme with this song's "old man rant" form.

3.bzfgt | 22/05/2014

"Here, the music faded down slightly when the vocals enter. This is a technique which is anathema to "good mixing technique": you want to make the vocals "pop out" of the mix without needing to reduce volume, or have the band re-arrange the song."

There's a particularly egregious example of this when MES enters on "Senior Twilight Stock Replacer," where the whole band including backing vocals drops way down behind him (HIS vocal does stick out but it wounds like crap).

And feel free to discuss any and all aspects of Fall songs here!

4.dannyno | 21/06/2015

This is Cameron's survey:
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/wellbeing/measuring-subjective-wellbeing-in-the-uk/investigation-of-subjective-well-being-data-from-the-ons-opinions-survey/initial-investigation-into-subjective-well-being-from-the-opinions-survey.html